Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, has a small Sikh minority. National Herald reported in February 2022 that the 2011 census put Sikhs at around seven lakh. They are concentrated in the Terai: about 93,000 in Lakhimpur Kheri district, with Pilibhit named alongside it as one of the few places where Sikhs are of consequence. Many Punjabi-rooted people in western UP came from Pakistan after Partition or during the 1980s in Punjab, and Sikhs there are mainly farmers and traders.

Key moments

• November 1984: Kanpur saw 127 casualties, PTI reported. The Uttar Pradesh government formed a Special Investigation Team on 27 May 2019 on Supreme Court orders, under DIG Balendu Bhushan Singh. It named 96 prime suspects, 22 of them dead by 2022, and made arrests in June 2022 over the burning of Gurudyal Singh's house at Nirala Nagar, where three people were burned alive.
• 12 July 1991: Uttar Pradesh police stopped a bus carrying Sikh pilgrims near Kachla Bridge in Badaun district and took 10 of them off. They were split into three groups and killed at different police stations, after police described them as "terrorists". On 1 April 2016 a CBI court convicted 47 policemen. On 15 December 2022 the Allahabad High Court set aside the murder convictions of 43 appellants, held that they had exceeded their powers in good faith, and sentenced them to seven years for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. It found no justification for the killing of the innocent men.
• 3 October 2021: at Lakhimpur Kheri, eight people died during a farmers' protest. Four farmers were allegedly knocked down by vehicles driven by BJP workers on their way to welcome the Deputy Chief Minister. The journalist Raman Kashyap, two BJP workers and the driver of a Union minister also died.

What it means today: the Sikhs of UP are few in number but they are settled farmers, and the state holds three of the Panth's open wounds: Kanpur 1984, Pilibhit 1991 and Lakhimpur Kheri 2021. National Herald reported in 2022 that the farmers' agitation and the Lakhimpur killing had left Sikh voters, who had traditionally backed the BJP, uncertain of their support.